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ӣ����Ƶ native and former Portland Trail Blazer Ben McLemore was found guilty Thursday of raping a woman at a booze-fueled team party in Lake Oswego, Oregon, capping an 11-day trial that saw testimony from two other ex-Blazer players.

The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for about 10 hours before returning the verdict.

McLemore looked ahead as Circuit Judge Michael Wetzel read their decision aloud: Guilty on one count each of first-degree rape, first-degree unlawful sexual penetration and second-degree sexual abuse.

McLemore, 32, faces a mandatory minimum sentence of eight years and four months in prison. He was taken into custody at the close of the hearing.

During a brief break before he was placed in handcuffs, McLemore stood to hug his mother, who traveled from ӣ����Ƶ to attend the trial.

McLemore had asked the court to be sentenced immediately, but the victim has a right to speak at a sentencing hearing and was not prepared to give a statement.

The sentencing is scheduled for next Wednesday.

One of McLemore’s lawyers, Kristen Winemiller, said the defense team was surprised by the verdict.

“But we had a jury that worked incredibly hard and took it seriously and the same is true with the judge,” she said.

First Assistant District Attorney Scott Healy, who prosecuted the case with Deputy District Attorney Randi Hall, praised the woman for coming forward.

She tuned in remotely to hear the verdict.

“She has been waiting three years, nine months to be vindicated for what happened to her and she stayed the course,” Healy said. “She really hasn’t healed from this emotionally. … She is still suffering the emotional trauma from what happened to her.”

Clackamas County prosecutors accused McLemore of sexually assaulting the woman, who was 21, during an October 2021 party at the home of Robert Covington, who also played for the Blazers.

McLemore testified that he was heavily intoxicated at the time and that the woman initiated sexual contact with him.

The two did not know each other before the party and spoke only briefly to introduce themselves, according to testimony during the trial in Oregon City.

The woman lived in Vancouver at the time and attended college in Washington. She now lives in Texas and works for a cosmetics company. The Oregonian/OregonLive does not typically identify sexual assault victims.

During closing arguments Tuesday, Healy told jurors that the woman drank heavily before and during the party and at one point vomited into a toilet before passing out on a couch.

The woman testified that she awoke to McLemore sexually assaulting her. She said she did not communicate during the assault, which she said continued after she let her body slide off the couch. She said McLemore moved her back to the couch and continued.

She said she drifted in and out of consciousness during the attack.

“She was physically helpless when he did this to her,” Healy told the jury. “He also did not have consent to do that to her.”

Healy emphasized that McLemore was aware of the woman’s compromised state, telling the jury that McLemore saw her vomiting in the bathroom, helped her out of the restroom and, once on the couch, put his finger down her throat to induce vomiting.

The prosecution showed a photograph taken of the woman during the party that showed her hovering over a toilet.

“So he has an absolute, complete, total idea of how unconscious, hammered drunk she is, as he’s doing all he can to lift her dead weight, to literally … drag her from that bathroom to that couch,” Healy said.

Healy highlighted McLemore’s initial denials to Lake Oswego police that he had sex with the woman and his subsequent reversal, calling McLemore’s account of the woman starting the encounter an “alternate reality defense” that McLemore created after learning law enforcement had conducted a DNA analysis.

McLemore never disputed having sex with the woman and argued she initiated sexual contact with him. One of his lawyers, Lisa Maxfield, told jurors that McLemore was drunk and unaware the woman was incapacitated.

She pointed to a text exchange between the woman’s friends. One texted that she saw something happening between the woman and McLemore and thought nothing of it, Maxfield told jurors.

Covington backed McLemore’s account, testifying that he saw a woman trying to arouse McLemore while the two were on a couch in his home. He said he then left the room.

Maxfield said McLemore and the woman were drunk and neither were able to consent to the encounter.

“This is the 21st century,” Maxfield told the jury. “Adult women, like men, have agency. They’re not stuffed animals. Like men, they are grown adults who make adult choices. If two drunk people have sex and the man is as drunk or more drunk than the woman, it doesn’t always have to be the man’s fault.”

Healy told jurors that McLemore went to the kitchen to grab paper towels to clean up the woman and then took off, believing the entire time that the woman he had sex with was unconscious.

“He never says anything. She never opens her eyes,” Healy said.

McLemore acknowledged he left the home quickly and blamed his hasty departure on a flurry of angry text messages from his then-wife.

McLemore, who attended Wellston High, played one season with the Blazers in 2021-22 and is no longer with the NBA. He has played professionally in Europe, China and most recently Turkey.

He was selected seventh overall in the 2013 NBA draft and averaged nine points and 2.3 rebounds per game in his nine-year NBA career.

Covington had played with McLemore for the Houston Rockets before they were teammates on the Blazers.

Former Blazer Quinn Cook also testified. Cook was on the 2021 preseason roster before the team waived him midway through camp; he plays professionally in China after playing in the NBA for five years.

Cook testified he attended the party and served mostly as a character witness for McLemore.

He testified that he didn’t drink any alcohol and left early — before the alleged assault took place.